Stephanie Zacharek

Even if you've never seen or heard of a movie called She Killed in Ecstasy, isn't it lovely to know that such a thing exists in the world? That 1971 eroto-thriller was a creation of prolific, Spanish-born writer-director Jess Franco, who had a lasting career making florid B-movies with sordid......

There's something bracingly honest about The Humbling, Barry Levinson's movie about a 67-year-old Shakespearean actor, played by Al Pacino, who, after being struck with crippling anxiety, gets his mojo restored — some of it, anyway — by a manipulative muse (Greta Gerwig). Based on the 2009 Philip Roth novel of......

Anyone who loves Michael Mann movies, or even just the idea of Michael Mann movies, accepts that film style is a language and something more, a way of thinking, feeling and looking that goes beyond basic plotting, dialogue or character motivation. I can tell you pretty much everything that happens......

Most of us can't imagine having a disease that tugs and tears at the very threads of who we are. When we wake up in the middle of the night with outlandish fears, we strike reassuring bargains with ourselves: If I lose my sight, I'll still have music. If I......

Without dropping spoilers right and left, how do I explain that I'm completely baffled by the Spierig Brothers' retro-futuristic thriller Predestination? So the she that's really a he is the earlier version of the he we meet later on, and the later version of the she who shows up near......

In a marvelously cheeky 1979 essay, the late, great Ellen Willis defined the difference between classical sex ("romantic, profound, serious...and typically feminine") and baroque sex ("pop, playful, funny...and stereotypically masculine"). So where shall we put German director Dominik Graf's Beloved Sisters, which tells the possibly semi-true story of the pact......